During the first semester of their sophomore year, students at some colleges are just getting into the swing of college life. College of Saint Benedict sophomores Grace Reiland and Rhianna Anya are already leading development of a project that will construct a fleet of big, comfortable swings on the Saint Ben’s campus.
The work has been part of a semester-long placemaking project for their Political Science 330 class, “Environmental Politics and Policy.” Student groups selected from a number of active line items on the CSB and Saint John’s University combined facilities master plan and began bringing that project to life.
“We have the projects,” CSB and SJU Physical Plant Director Russ Klein said. “We tell them, ‘You’re going to build a business case. Talk with stakeholders. Survey students. Study material types. Develop estimates. Do the legwork to help get us through the permitting process. And then we’re going to find creative ways for these projects to become tangible.’”
“I think the great thing about this school and our campuses is the sense of connectedness,” said Reiland, a political science major. “Having something I helped research possibly being implemented on the CSB campus is really cool.”
The projects are a vivid example of the ways experiential learning is embedded into the academic curriculum at CSB and SJU. “In nearly all of my classes, I include some sort of experiential, project-based research with a community or campus partner,” said Matt Lindstrom, the Edward L. Henry Professor of Political Science and director of the Eugene J. McCarthy Center for Public Policy and Civic Engagement. “The students are always more motivated when they can see and feel the connections between their work and an actual place or project – especially if it’s in their backyard.”
Klein agrees. “We’re bringing the academic curriculum together with operations,” he said. “These are tangible things that are happening on our campuses, and we’re embedding the student experience into that planning process.”
On their project, Reiland, Anya and their team pursued the development of large, porch-style swings on the CSB campus, inspired by similar swings in Philadelphia’s University City District. Based on their research, survey work and recommendations, there could be attractive, wooden swings mounted on sturdy, red platforms appearing in spaces around the grassy mall in front of the Benedicta Arts Center before the end of the academic year.
For Anya, a political science major, the significance of student involvement reached beyond her role as a planner and researcher. “We got a lot of student feedback via our focus groups and surveys,” she explained. “For this project, it was critical to get student feedback, because sometimes students feel like they don’t have any control of the projects occurring around campus.”
Reiland, meanwhile, felt the significance of an initiative that went beyond academics. “This was more than just a theoretical class project that would be done when we turned it in at the end of the semester,” she said. “There was a lot of pressure to make sure we did enough research and our recommendations made sense for the project.”
Saint John’s sophomore environmental studies major Gabe Evenocheck felt a degree of global significance to his group’s project. He was part of a group exploring the feasibility and logistics of installing electronic vehicle (EV) charging stations on both campuses.
“As more people adopt EVs,” he noted, “building the infrastructure to support them is critical in reducing emissions and protecting the environment.”
So Evenocheck and his group worked with Klein and the physical plant team to study campus infrastructure, including maps of the underground power grid. They worked with Chief Information and Transformation Officer Casey Gordon, who offered help and advice on project management processes and staff/faculty surveying. They studied the logistics of monetizing these chargers and what that might look like.
“Our team worked hard to bring in as many perspectives as possible and double-check every detail, because we wanted to make sure we were setting this up for success,” Evenocheck said. “It did take some time to work through the complexities. But it was exciting to know we were contributing to something that will make a real difference to our institutions.”
Other groups in the class tackled challenges like reimagining the abandoned hockey rink on the lower campus at Saint John’s, enhancing accessibility and signage at the Saint John’s beach and conducting a water irrigation study for both campuses. One student team worked with City of St. Joseph Community Development Director Nate Keller to explore establishing a downtown social district.
“Without a doubt, Russ Klein and Nate Keller have been the best class project partners I’ve worked with,” Lindstrom said. “They understand the student research projects provide valuable information and ideas. They’ve both been fantastic mentors as the students navigate the sometimes-difficult tradeoffs and complexities of real-world projects – where budgets are finite, stakeholders may disagree and decision-making processes can test one’s patience.”